Nippyness
 

So I have a cali Kingsnake. Roughly 6 months old. Some reason identifies my fingers as food. Full on bite down and attempt to eat my fingers. Here's where it gets weird doesn't seem to care or recognize the scent of mice pinkies. Been that way for months now. To clarify he has eaten but only live and takes up to 24hrs for him to eat. I have multiple other Kingsnakes in the same rack that are doing fine. Is this behavior common? I'm at a loss right now. While his bites don't hurt it's quite annoying to immediately be latched onto and have to run him under water to let go everytime I spot clean or get anywhere near him. Any tips or advice is welcome.

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Yes it's normal, especially in the spring.

Rub a little white vinegar on your hands before you put them in the enclosure, the sharp smell should get him to back off.

Thank you for the reply. Is it something he will grow out of? Also I will try the white vinegar trick next time!

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I don't keep Cali kings, but some of my rosy boas are like that. I wear thin cotton gardening gloves to handle them, at least until they're out of the tub for a minute and I can gauge their mood.

Rosies don't seem to grow out of this, but kings might be different.

Mine go through cycles; as I said, they are worse in the spring even if I don't brumate them because they slow down on eating normally over the winter. You have to gauge their mood every time you go to handle them.

I've kept multiple species of kings and by far the most notorious for this type of behavior are Cali Kings. Unfortunately, in my experience this behavior becomes even more frequent as they get older because they feel that they can eat much larger prey items. This behavior will, however, vary from different individuals but I have noticed that Albinos are much more prone to this type of behavior which may be partly due to their poorer vision.

Actually my female MBK was particularly bad each spring. She would grab, pull, wrap your hand, etc.

Here's my thing though is why won't he take food? He sees a finger it's game on he sees a pinkie he could careless.

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How do you feed? He may want to be tease fed (hold the PK or FT prey in a tweezers, and play it gently in front of him).

He may not like the smell of the mice you're offering -- I've had people buy snakes from me that couldn't get them to eat the mice they offered, but mice from a different vendor were eaten well.

I definitely rank MBK as number two for this type of behavior!